Trump approval pops to 46 percent as prez upends the DC establishment

Trump has warred more with Republicans and their leaders than he has with Democrats

(National Sentinel) Politics Unusual: President Donald J. Trump has had a good week, as evidenced by his rising poll numbers.

Rasmussen Reports notes that Trump’s approval rating has popped to 46 percent in the days after doing a deal with Democrats to keep the government funded for another three months and to provide immediate funding for victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

Meanwhile, The New York Times Peter Baker reports that Trump is essentially upending 150 years of two-party rule — which has actually merged into establishment rule — because he does not appear to be beholden to either Republicans or Democrats.

“Although elected as a Republican last year, Mr. Trump has shown in the nearly eight months in office that he is, in many ways, the first independent to hold the presidency since the advent of the current two-party system around the time of the Civil War,” Baker writes.

Trump has warred more with Republicans and their leaders than he has with Democrats, though he’s singled out both for ire in tweet storms. But then again, the GOP has surprised their own supporters by being so belligerent to one of their own presidents, openly defying him on such important campaign pledges like repealing and replacing Obamacare and rejecting his first budget, which sought to cut tens of billions of dollars and wasteful programs. He gave Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell nine months to pass something substantive, and they failed to do so.

“The truth is that he is a political independent, and he obviously won the nomination and the presidency by disrupting a lot of norms that Republicans had assumed about their own party and their own voters,” Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, a conservative website, told Baker “This week was the first time he struck out and did something completely at odds with what the Republican leadership and establishment would want him to do in this position.”

But Trump knows where his bread is buttered. It’s not likely he’s suddenly going to shift Left and govern with Democrats. Still, last week was a reminder, especially to the GOP, that the president’sagenda is what got him elected, and opposing it carries distinct political risks.